What's your take on why many women and girls lost interest in feminism over the decades?

[nestoftables]

Just that...I've read a few things talking about why feminism became an unfashionable word etc.

Having just finished reading 'Material Girls' which has a brief summary of second wave and third wave feminism towards the end, I am interested in different perspectives on what happened, based on different experiences and different reading on this. Thanks!

@Naunet

Because girls are raised to prioritise men, and men don’t like feminists. I’ve never seen any other human rights movement get so much hate, even from the people who are meant to benefit from it.

This well phrased reason here ^^

It isn't something nice girls do.

Think of the multitude of words to describe women who are less than passive, compliant and pleasant in their manner: harpy, harridan, witch, bitch, cow, mare, fishwife, etc etc - are there parallel derogatory terms for men who are angry, emphatic, assertive, impolite?

Then think of all the sex based terms of abuse based on female animals and female biology common in current language, and the frequency of sexual violence in casual threats all over social media, and compare this to 'he's a bit of a dick' which is about as bad as it gets towards men.

It took me four decades to wake up to the profoundness of the sleeping giant of misogyny I'm so used to living around that I barely knew it was there until around 2012 when it started to wake.

I've seen/heard feminism blamed for taking the dads out of the home and raising the numbers of single parent families.

The women didn't get to finish explaining the entire point which was a shame because I would have like to have known if this was down to women thinking we can do it all without men and taking kids away from their dad's or whether ot merely sets the bar higher for acceptable behaviour in relationships and therefore its our fault if men can't or won't hack it.

I think because it’s now seen that things are a ‘choice’ when that’s not even vaguely true:

Ie ‘Female chooses to have a baby and then loses out on paid work because she chooses to look after the baby - her choice’. This misses out the discrimination against women who might be pregnant, the differences in how society sees say a dad leaving early to collect a child (good dad) vs mum leaving early (bad worker), the mental load at home and in the workplace that’s placed on women, the expectation that women provide childcare and fathers ‘help’ etc.

‘Female chooses low paid job’. Ignores the structural barriers to high paid jobs, workplaces that are set up around a male timetable and social hierarchy, the societal differences like women are called bossy but men assertive etc.

It’s painted that females have all this choice. But that glosses over all of this stuff that’s woven into the fabric of society. Feminism is now more about tackling these more invisible and unquantifiable barriers to success and it can seem more petty than say fighting for equal pay.

Growing up in the 80s it was definitely a case of feminists being portrayed as hairy armpit dungaree wearing man haters. At the same time, women were being shown as making strides in the workplace - power suits were everywhere, the PM was a woman, the message was definitely that women are now equal.

I went to an all girls school and it never occurred to me that having space to speak without boys taking up all the attention was something that with hindsight I should have valued more.

I always thought of myself as a feminist - quite possibly because most girls I knew didnt and I liked being contrary.

I was never able to have children but I remember arguing with my sisters who both said that maternity leave was unfair because why should women get this extra time off and that they found working for women was soooo much harder because they were sooo much more demanding. I was adamant that the stuff their female bosses asked them to do was no more than their male bosses did but somehow because they were women, it was worse.

when my sister became pregnant I did remind her that she'd said maternity leave was unfair she doesnt think that anymore

as ive got older ive realised that I thought men took me seriously and listened to me because I was smart but now Im post fuckable being over 50 and invisible to any man under 50, I realise that actually they just fancied me and I could have been talking utter shite for all they cared

The other thing is that the mens rights movement has come much more to the fore and men being victims of feminism has gained much more traction since the internet. the internet has allowed them to connect up and social media was designed by and for men. Girls are bombarded with an unbelievable amount of pressure to conform to what men want no matter how outrageous it is. Lots of young girls do call themselves feminists....but its cool girl sex work is empowering men are victims too beeeee kiiiind 'feminism'

Are there fewer?
Or does feminism just evolve as women get older.
In my 20's I was definitely lib fem/equality, blah
Pretty sure that the women 20 years older were thinking, aye give it a few more years and see how you feel about that.
Hard core feminism is never very popular. But I do think that any gains made - in lots of areas - are less appreciated by people who haven't known what it was like not to have them. That's just human nature though..

I was born in the early 60s, when I was in high school it seemed to me that things were improving for women and would just somehow naturally keep improving. Looking back it's hard to imagine why I thought so other than comparing my imagined future life to the life I saw my mother leading. In fourth or fifth grade (so early 70s) my class had a debate as to whether girls were equal to boys. I was amazed that so many of the girls agreed with the boys who said girls were not as good as boys. When our teacher pressed them for reasons, they said that boys are smarter and stronger. I think that was the first time I saw that desire to be one of the "cool girls," to be approved of by the people who "count" on such obvious display. But I didn't realize how much I was motivated by that same desire until much later. Not wanting to be a "bitch" is a pretty powerful disincentive to speak one's mind.
I had crappy social skills, so I related to TV and radio, and bought into the messages that everything was fine for women, that we just needed True Love and we could do anything. I think I continued holding the comforting thought that things would somehow naturally keep improving bit by bit because it was easier for me.
Jane Claire Jone's "Terf Wars" piece nailed me all-too-perfectly, when she got to 2018 and the women said "WHOA..."

I agree with a lots of what's been said.

I consider myself extremely lucky to have been educated in single sex schools from the age of about 7, so I never encountered much sexism until later. Apart from the usual sexual harassment in the streets and obscenities shouted from buses when in school uniform etc... But I never had the implicit messages that "science isn't for girls" etc that I understand happens more in co-ed schools.

Hitting the workplace opened my eyes though. So much sexual harassment and snide comments that I'd only done well because I was blonde etc (from my boss's boss, which was nice). Getting paid less than men, dealing with mansplaining and men going for things they are clearly not qualified for vs me feeling inadequate but being told I'm talented though not quite believing it. I've found it's just really chipped away at my confidence over time and I've become a bit ground down and not grabbed opportunities that I should have gone for. I had bags of confidence in my abilities when I left school.

I'm always shocked by the level of internalised misogyny that my mum has. Her favourite 'insult' towards me is that I'm "too strident" when I stick up for women. She talks a lot about being 'ladylike' which does my nut in.

I think it's a combination of gaslighting - "women already have equality...." and misogynistic put downs of feminists "hairy, ugly, unattractive" that's akin to bullying that gives people the message that they shouldn't be feminists.

I’ve never met a happy feminist. 🤷🏼‍♀️

@Pasithea

I’ve never met a happy feminist. 🤷🏼‍♀️

🤣

@Naunet

Because girls are raised to prioritise men, and men don’t like feminists. I’ve never seen any other human rights movement get so much hate, even from the people who are meant to benefit from it.

I keep coming back to that 20th century line about staging a coup: first, you have to seize the radio station. Even at the height of feminism, women never really got into the cultural positions - TV, movies, editors, studio bosses, directors etc. - that shape mindsets. It's very telling that of the few female writer/directors in the media now, almost all are from very posh backgrounds with the self-assurance, connections and money to overcome the barriers most women still face.

Now social media is shaping mindsets, and tech is an even more male-oriented field than the 'old' arts-based media. When you see whose accounts get deleted, which forums get closed down and whose comments get bumped up, you can guess it's not women pulling the levers behind the scenes there. Mumsnet is one of the few places that doesn't have those insecurity-feeding 'like' buttons and I really hope it stays that way.

@Floisme

I'm 64 and I don't ever remember it being fashionable.

This, although I'm not 64.

I never thought of myself as a feminist although in my day to day life I was constantly pushing back at cultural sexism as a teenager and in my 20s I volunteered at a women's centre (remember those) and my work involved supporting minority ethnic volunteer organisations, especially women's organisations. I just got on with it. It took me till TRA ideology (specifically what happened to JKR peaked me) for late onset feminism.

There has been very intentional media manipulation in this direction since the late 80s early 90s. It's not coincidence that violent porn has gone from being illegal, to accepted, and now encouraged as "normal".

It's my suspicion that feminism was seen as destabilising in some way to the financial interests of the senior end of western capitalism and that the media manipulation was an intentional campaign to counter this. Exactly the same motivations and methods as the walking back of civil rights and the ramping up of overt, institutional racism.

Because during my teen years and young adulthood, the message was that women are empowered now and those angry feminists are bra-burning fundamentalists who hate men. It wasn't the done thing to consider that wearing push up sexy underwear, having fake tan, dieting to look like the sexy woman in the magazines, doing hair and make-up, hair removal, and countless other things was anything other than empowering for women.

The modern libfem movement is the patriarchy's friend. It was only as I went through fertility struggles and then became a mum that I realised women are still screwed over on a systemic level, started to read feminist views that are concerned with women's systemic oppression based on their sex, and realised that the "you go hun, you do you and anything you do is automatically feminist " individualistic model of feminism is far from feminist.

When Women's Liberation was flourishing in the 70s it didn't get a favourable media coverage. ie it was often written about in disparaging ways, but was written about. ie so even though in a negative context whatever the issue, child benefit going to the mother, equal pay were up for discussion.

But by the 80s, and I am not sure but somebody must have written about it, there was a distinct male backlash against women's liberstion. ie the promotion of girl power and ladettes was part of the that backlash because it promoted the idea that if women just became a sort of female lad (or stock broker) everything would be okay (even though women would still have to go home to house work etc.)

One of the consequences of this is that some women, then realised that this stupid capitalist version of equality, marketed as having it all, was just a con. (It also help for instance the housing market hike it prices so that whereas previously one salarly could just about cover housing costs it became standard that two salaries were needed, even if only renting.)

And (but that's a whole other thread) the arrival of funding for some women's support services such as women's aid and rape crisis meant that some of us thought maybe it will just grow. (Silly us!) And it didn't help that the National Women's Liberation Conference in 1978 spectacularly fell apart, and for some women they were so shell shocked by the event they just opted out. So the tenuous but quite healthy network of local grass roots women's groups just fell away.

So feminist theory that had come as much from women's practical campaigning got hived off in to unversities, and on one level became irrelevant to every one but those making a university career. And then they too got blocked because queer theory took over in higher education, and women's studies became gender studies, resulting in young people moving into jobs with influence, eg newspaper, politics, teaching were not education about feminism and women's sex based rights, but about gender and self identity.

The only thing all of these had in common was that it legitimaised saying that women's liberation was just about sad old women who couldn't get a man, and yes had hairy legs and were probably vegitarian with children in hand knitted jumpers.

Honestly I thought the war for equality was over. I always felt pretty equal throughout my teens and 20s. In fact until I became a mum I didn’t realise that actually we still don’t have equality. Turns out that when you’re a young single woman you’re more or less equivalent to a young single man... it’s when you get older and have kids that the inequality kicks in.

I lost interest in feminism when the idea of empowerment through stripping/glamour shots/porn etc started to be a thing. It did not chime with my views on porn/prostitution etc.

I don’t think motherhood brought me back- beyond using MN and realising not all feminists were buying that and many still saw those things as exploitation.

@Pasithea

I’ve never met a happy feminist. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Hiya. I’d like to introduce myself. I’m a feminist and truly happy.

I didn’t feel feminism was necessary when I was younger. I did well at school, got onto the course I wanted and got a job at the end without too much difficulty.

My first job was awful, as was my third, but I didn’t really think it was necessarily due to being female. I had grown up in a family where there was never any direct suggestion of ongoing inequality (though dad worked full time, mum part time sometimes). Mum wanted us to have the education she hadn’t been allowed, as a working class girl. My sister and I did very well and ended up at top universities/high level courses. Anything seemed possible at that stage, yet I found workplaces hard to negotiate. Again, due to my upbringing, it didn’t really cross my mind that my difficulties might be related to the fact that the career I had chosen hadn’t really been set up with women in mind. At the same time, I prided myself on being “as good as a man”, ignoring the fact that that in itself was internalised misogyny. I found it difficult to negotiate for better conditions, but again, I assumed that was because I wasn’t good at it and not that it was directly related to my sex.

When I had children, it really started to go downhill. Though exDH and I shared one and a half jobs for a while, he wasn’t really happy. We went through various stages, when I supported him, but as he rarely did any work within the home, we ended up in the pattern both of us had grown up in: he worked and I looked after the children.

Eventually I left him and am faced with the same dilemma I think a number of women find themselves in. He has way more than me, and my pension is looking very dodgy. Ironically that’s exacerbated by living in a country where there appears to be more equality. Women here are expected to work and pay into their own pension, so though I couldn’t find a job for years when we came, I’m not entitled to half of his pension or savings now we’ve split.

It’s only with the benefit of hindsight that I can see how many of the things that have frustrated me throughout life have been related to being female. Those negotiations that I found so difficult, the frustration I felt that sometimes it seemed I was paid less than my male counterparts might well have been related to the sexism of those in charge. A recent survey of my profession showed that a woman would routinely be offered £1,000 to £3,000 less than a similarly qualified male when applying for positions, and that the female candidates were regarded as being much less likely to achieve promotion or partnership.

So here I am, in my fifties, and though I’m relatively well off, I can see that life has cheated me in some ways that are directly or indirectly related to my sex. And now, worse still, I feel like misogyny seems to be rising and that women are perhaps being treated worse than they were when I was young. I noticed a profound change in the genderisation of clothes and toys, even within the time period when my children were growing up.

So now finally, in my fifties, I have started taking some actions to defend women’s rights. I have written to various politicians, having never done so before. If it wasn’t for coronavirus, I think I’d have taken more part in some of the feminist actions and groups that are springing up in the UK.

And I’m hoping, when my children finally leave home (the youngest is going into his second last year at school) I will have a lot more time and opportunity to act.

Feminism definitely had a bad name when I was younger and I swallowed the negative rhetoric. Now I’m older, I see that we never did reach the equality that I assumed we would reach in my lifetime. I only hope that we can stop things from regressing further.

Was taught that we have equality. Didn’t find out how much of a lie that was until later.

And now- well. There are too many ‚girls Rule the world, we are the best’ approaches. I want equality, not dominance.

And it didn't help that the National Women's Liberation Conference in 1978 spectacularly fell apart

@stumbledin - how and why did that happen?

As a PP said, it has a lot to do with women being socialized to please men. As a student in the 90‘s the overwhelming majority of female peers I met in partnerships took the role of the ,carer‘. From cooking to driving the guy to some kayaking spot and then picking him up a couple of hours later down the river… Catering to his needs and hobbies… I was told flat out IN THE 90’s IN WESTERN EUROPE that with my attitude (=refusing this ‚carer‘ role) I would never get a husband - the idea that this might not be my primary goal never occurred to the young woman who told me this.
Heck a male friend of mine, also a student, one day came to me, flabbergasted: He had been out with another (male) friend who had brought along 2 female students. And when the time to pay came, the two girls started to mock the picture of the woman on the money bill (it was before the EURO), a noted feminist of the 19th Century in our country: „Why do feminists always have to look so ugly?“ the one girl said and the other giggled.
I am convinced to this day that those girls tried to win the guys over with this crap. Ironically, it had the opposite effect and the evening ended early.
Sadly, at least in my generation, a lot of girls chose men over self-respect. For many, the wake-up call came- if at all - way later.

Another happy feminist here ((waves)).

I do think some of it is just youthful ignorance, and maybe wanting to be with the cool crowd or whatever, it was certainly that way with me. In my teens and early 20's I would have happily told you that feminism wasn't needed and self declared feminists are embarrassing and probably are just bitter that they can't get a man .

I remember even back then knowing that 'male things' were somehow better, cooler, more serious, more valued. 'Women's things' were frivolous and somehow less than.

Don't do better than the boys, you'll show them up, make them feel bad. Don't be too confident, too loud, too assertive - that will put them off.
And I realise now that from a very young age I knew that women's appearance was what was most valuable/ interesting thing about them, which I now know is sad and pathetic. I judged other women harshly because I felt judged. Women are always on display.

And yes to whoever talked about belatedly realising that men didn't care about their opinion or ideas - I used to have a fair amount of guy friends that I would spend ages chatting to, thought we were close etc. I realise now that they probably never saw me as an actual friend, they were just appeasing me and hoping to fuck me (I realised this when I broke up with my boyfriend at the time and most of my 'guy friends' tried to come on to me ).

I do think that prevalence of violent pornography speaks to something underlying in men. It is not socially acceptable anymore to subjugate us, so they use violent fantasy and imagery to in their minds reassert dominance, and degrade us. It's very unsettling.

Sorry for the long rant - writing all this down just makes me despair at how much there is to fight for.

Honestly, one reason is some of the threads I’ve seen on this site really put me off the concept of feminism. The comments and opinions do not reflect anything in my life, some seem quite aggressive middle class musings and seem to end up in petty arguments.

There was a huge row at the final plenary, which was run on a sort conventional conference principle of motions, comments etc., coming from workshops that had happened over the weekend. But some thought they were being denied a voice by those chairing the session. Everyone who was there has there on version of events, revolutionary feminists against social feminists, middle of the roaders (lets be nice) but it was about political differences.

The structure of the final plenary, essentially hierarchical was at odds with the conference itself, a myriad of different workshops, many strands, issues, somehow being shoe horned into what was important and what wasn't.

This is from Feminist Archive North:

National Women’s Liberation Movement Conference, Birmingham conf
Two strands: How are we oppressed, and how do we oppress each other? Issues: The Seventh Demand and the splitting of the Sixth Demand.
“[There were] two strands to the conference … and I still think that was quite a good suggestion really, but the revolutionary feminist group in London were not keen on the ‘how do we oppress each other’ angle and the socialist feminists didn’t like the ‘who oppresses us’ and I think the groups that felt particularly oppressed themselves just wanted to concentrate on that. So there were all these different elements and then there was this mass of women who always pour in to a conference, so it was a right old mixture. ” (Garthwaite OHP Interview No. 7)
The Seventh Demand:

1. We demand freedom for all women from intimidation by the threat or use of violence or sexual coercion regardless of marital status; and an end to the laws, assumptions and institutions which perpetuate male dominance and aggression to women. (Full list of demands in Appendix I)

The Seventh Demand is about violence against women. Portions of the proposed demand are dropped before its passage, notably a phrase that stated that men are responsible for women’s oppression; “Male violence against women is an expression of male supremacy and political control of women”. This is rejected by a majority vote. At issue is the definition of the source of women’s oppression, which becomes polarised into issues of political alignment and identification. Radical and revolutionary feminists argue on the basis of sex class, stating that all women are oppressed as a class, regardless of where they are placed in other social structures. Socialist feminists of varying types argue for the continued relevance of economic class and the need to overthrow capitalism in tandem with women’s liberation and not as a separate struggle from it, along with continuing debates around the importance or non importance of Marxist ideas. Discussions become quite heated as questions of sexuality and sexual identification are included and calls are made to split the sixth demand, making it focus solely on an end to discrimination against lesbians and moving the other portion to a preface, in order to categorise it as an overall assumption behind the demands as a whole. This is the last National WLM Conference. Despite economic resources, no group offers to organise a conference the following year. Following this, all conferences are regional, identity based, and/or topical. “The difficulties we have talking to each other, sharing experiences, analysing ideas, and discussing our differences, were horribly fit up at the Birmingham Conference … it is clear that the polarization and hostilities that emerged left many women feeling outsiders, and demoralized.” (Catcall Collective 1979: 2)

feministarchivenorth.org.uk/1978-1/

Please note that any archive or written history of the WLM will only reflect the perspective of those contributing. ie the one held by the British Library was widely regarded as a joke and so obviously cobbled together for a grant project. But now it is put forward as THE history.

Here are some other links but from a quick look they are all fromthe perspective of mainly socialist / academic feminists. There doesn't seem to be a revolutionary feminist account:
www.womensgrid.org.uk/archive/2009/06/28/seven-pillars-of-liberation-wlm-conference-1978/
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09612025.2010.489343?journalCode=rwhr20

Why the movement didn't keep growing? (2nd waver here)

Because we'd been pushing and pushing and pushing and pulling for all the "easy" stuff outside private life, things like votes and equality in promotions and pay (still miles away on that) and we'd made progress.

The next step was obviously going to get to involve changing men's behavior: letting women be in public space without harassment, men taking care of half the housework, men actually paying attention to women's sexuality.

And that's where it ground to a near-halt. (It's restarting a bit now.) It's too painful. You might have to sacrifice your love life to get real change on those things. Too huge a risk. So suddenly it was all about "empowerment" which was somehow always doing exactly what the patriarchy wanted and getting that all-important pat on the head.

I don't know how anybody could fall for the "we've already arrived!" line of BS. Are you still in terror if you have to go through / live in a dodgy part of town? Yes? Are men in terror in the same situation? No? Nobody's arrived anywhere. Duh.